Assessment of the technical usable potential of the TUM Shaft Hydro Power plant on the Aurino River, Italy

Compared to solar and wind powers, micro hydro power is probably the least common of the three readily used renewable energy sources, but it has the potential to produce the most and more reliably power if the plant is placed in the proper location. Furthermore, in the last years the necessity for developing small hydropower plants has increased due to more and more urgent environmental concerns. The Shaft Hydro Power plant developed at the Technical University of Munich (denoted in the following as TUM-SHP plant) is an innovative, environmentally friendly small hydropower plant that has been designed to be installed in the body of a weir with a height between 2 and 10 m and that requires a discharge flow rate of 3 m3/s to achieve the minimum target 50 kW rated power. The purpose of this paper is to present first results of an ongoing research activity aimed at searching proper sites for the installation of the TUM-SHP plant in Italy. The location analysis methodology to search for potential sites is based on the investigation of rivers and weirs with proper features for the installation of the plant and afterwards on the analysis of the protected areas and the already existing water abstractions in the considered territories. The exploitable discharge has been calculated after studying the regional and provincial laws concerning water exploitation and the calculation of the achievable energy has been carried out considering the flow duration curve of the rivers and translating the values at the weirs of interest. The proposed methodology is tested on the key study of the Aurino River that flows in the province of Bolzano, Alto Adige.